Will Asian voters vote based on identity? It's a complicated question.

Twice a week, 81-year-old Rui Wan Huang takes the bus from her senior housing in San Francisco's Chinatown to a campaign office in the Inner Richmond, where she spends the day calling Cantonese-speaking voters on behalf of Scott Wiener, a candidate seeking to replace Rep. Nancy Pelosi in Congress.

For months, she and up to 20 volunteers keep the same routine: They ride the 1 California across town and dial numbers from printed call sheets to rally voters for one of the biggest California races this midterm. At the office, natural light pours in through the windows, and a large painted giraffe outside nods to Wiener's nickname, one he earned for his 6-foot-7 stature. He is running against city Supervisor Connie Chan, a Chinese American who has lived in San Francisco since moving from Hong Kong with her mother at the age of 13.

Volunteers sit in rows of folding chairs with their cellphones on speaker, and the room is full of the sound of dial tones from disconnected numbers. Every now and then, a person answers, and the volunteers read from a script, asking the person who answered if they plan to vote for Scott Wiener. Just two weeks before the election, the volunteers were 22,680 calls into a list of about about 38,000 voters who requested Cantonese ballots this election as of July. Huang, who moved to San Francisco from China 30 years ago, is a monolingual Cantonese speaker. (A campaign translator spoke with SFGATE to aid the interview on a recent Monday).

They are trying to reach as many voters as they can before Tuesday, when San Franciscans will decide on a new representative for the 11th Congressional District for the first time in 40 years. The Asian American voter is key to the results of this year's midterm. There are 4.1 million eligible Asian voters in California, according to 2024 data from Pew Research Center. They are the state's fastest-growing voting bloc, having grown by 25% in the past decade . But whether it matters that the winning candidate shares their racial identity remains to be seen.

California holds nearly one third of the entire U.S. Asian electorate, but they remain a pluralistic voting group. Forty-eight percent of Asian Americans in California identify with the Democratic Party, 17% identify with the Republican Party, and more than 25% identify as independents, according to a 2022 Carnegie-YouGov poll. They're more likely to vote than Latinos and just as likely to vote as African Americans and white voters, according to a Public Policy Institute of California report , and more voters are under 55 and around half identify as immigrants. These distinct characteristics make them very different from most voting blocks - they're also more highly educated and earn more - making their decisions increasingly less predictable . Even as Asian American candidates became front and center this year, running up and down the state across consequential midterm House races, there's no concrete evidence the Asian American voter is swayed by identity alone.

How SF voters are looking at identity

The decision to put Wiener's campaign office in the Richmond was a deliberate one. When the two candidates faced off in June, Wiener won the district by just 66 votes , beating Chan in our own city district by a slim margin. The district has been considered a battleground for the election (Chan's campaign office is in the Mission). Wiener paid $20,000 to put up two billboards , including in Chan's district, advertising a Connie Chan chatbot. Her team accused the billboards of having racist undertones, and Wiener's team took it down a few days later.

In San Francisco, ethnically Chinese residents make up 22% of voters. A San Francisco Standard analysis of the June primary found that precincts with a higher number of Chinese American voters, like the Outer Sunset, Bay View and Chinatown, preferred Chan. Wiener was found to have more of an advantage in precincts with fewer Chinese voters.

"San Francisco is Pandora's box," Vivien Leung, an assistant professor who researches Asian American voting behaviors at Santa Clara University, said. Wiener chose a Chinese name to put on the ballot, following a long-held tradition, which she said helps connect him to voters. (This move has been criticized by Chan, who called it cultural appropriation). "He was skillful in using that in his last campaign for re-election," Leung said. SFGATE spoke to a few Cantonese-speaking voters who referred to Wiener only by his Cantonese name, "Wai Sin-gou" which means "authority."

In the Chan and Wiener race, several other identities are also undeniably playing a role: Chan is a woman. Wiener is Jewish. They also have their own policy priorities around housing, policing and artificial intelligence regulation, for example, which are important issues for voters. Their campaign donations are also coming from varying pools of money. These identifiers –– whether voters are conscious of them or not –– also have meaning when it comes to how voters will decide their preferred candidates come Election Day.

Still, Asian identity matters a lot for Sean Kim, the owner of Joe's Ice Cream in the Richmond. He is a Korean immigrant, the vice president of Geary Boulevard Merchants Association and a board member of the Chinese American Democratic Club. Ultimately, he wants a candidate "who has similar life experience" as him.

"As soon as they get voted, we are done, we get ignored," he said. "[Chan is] really an immigrant herself. She has an accent. She knows how difficult it is for Asian immigrants to communicate with people."

He said that sometimes people make fun of his accent, but hearing Chan's makes him feel represented in a way Wiener cannot.

Lilly Simmering, the executive director of the Japanese American Citizens League, who is of Hmong descent, said the fact that Asian voters are split on Wiener and Chan is unsurprising.

"When it comes to people who you want to represent us, many of us look toward integrity, discipline and who that person is," she said. "We are very aware of racial identity of the candidate, but at the end of the day, we vote based on who we think will work the hardest for us.

"Asian Americans are pretty good at figuring out whether someone is going to do what they say or just saying it to get votes."

'I'm also a vibes person'

In the Richmond, a diverse district of 57,000 residents with a large Asian population, Chan's posters hang in storefront windows. There are businesses where most workers, and their patrons, speak only Chinese. But just a few blocks north, in SF's ultra-wealthy Sea Cliff neighborhood, also in Chan's district, multimillion-dollar mansions with ocean views are home to billionaires like Marc Benioff and Tom Steyer. A majority of voters in that neighborhood cast their ballot for Wiener in the June primary, as well as in the bordering neighborhood Presidio Terrace, another wealthy pocket where Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi lives, according to Grow SF.

Jesse Ahluwalia, who quit his tech job at Tesla to open laundromats in the Richmond where he lives, told SFGATE in a phone call that he plans to vote for Chan. As a first-generation Indian American who grew up in San Jose, he said he never thought of himself as Asian, and said Chan being Chinese has nothing to do with his support for her.

"It appears she has a lot of support because she is Asian," he said. "I don't think I'm voting for her because of that."

At first, he was more swayed by Wiener, but the recent flood of tech money coming into Wiener's campaign, including a $3 million donation from an Anthropic PAC, turned him off. As a self-described nonpolitical person, he admits, aside from that, his decision is based on the fact that "I am also a vibes person."

Sheila Tully, 72, is a retired professor of gender studies at San Francisco State University, and a volunteer for Chan's campaign. Tully, a white woman, said she supports Chan because of her policies, but, she noted, it's a no-brainer for her to support a woman. Tully said that since volunteering, she has suspected that voters project their own anti-Asian sentiments onto Chan, and she thinks gender is playing an unspoken role in the race.

It may be difficult to parse exactly how identity factors into voters' decisions this election, where dozens of races this year have featured at least one Asian American.

In Sacramento's House election, Rep. Doris Matsui, a Japanese American octogenarian, is running against Mai Vang, a candidate of Hmong descent in her 40s, to represent California's 7th District. Both are Democrats.

In Orange County, Rep. Young Kim, who is South Korean, is in a fight against fellow Republican Ken Calvert, who is white. A closely watched race for another redistricted Sacramento House seat pits Republican-turned-independent Rep. Kevin Kiley , who is white, against state Sen. Richard Pan, who is Chinese. Rep. Ro Khanna, who is Indian American, is up against another Indian American in Silicon Valley. And in Los Angeles, Councilwoman Nithya Raman, an Indian American woman, is running to oust incumbent Mayor Karen Bass, who is Black.

"Voters can't rely on party affiliation to distinguish them," Leung said of Democrat-on-Democrat races. But, she said, Asian voters may show a slight preference for a candidate where there are fewer policy distinctions, and for Kim, a Republican, her visible Asian last name could help.

Karthick Ramakrishnan, a researcher who studies Asian American political behavior and is co-founder of AAPI Data, said that voters might look beyond their ethnicities and that it will be a competition that is "both generational and ideological."

Vang, he said "brings a youthful energy," whereas Matsui, who is in her eighties and has served 20 years, brings a long record that can signal trust to voters. He also thinks that for the Asian community, Chan's on-the-ground connections could serve as an advantage, since her fundraising arm is much weaker, compared to Wiener's phone banking efforts.

Even as Asian American communities have generally leaned Democrat, subgroups have shifted in their voting allegiances over the past decade. He can point to a few observations: Chinese Americans began favoring Trump and the GOP through 2016, but are reversing course. Indian Americans saw some movement toward Trump between 2016 and 2020, but that has also stabilized, and Filipino Americans have continued to move toward Trump since 2016.

During the 2018 midterms, the Asian American vote in California was important for the first time ever, he said, particularly in deciding party control in Orange County and Los Angeles House races.

While voters are more eager than eight years ago, he said, there are still obstacles. Voters are skeptical about elections, as the Department of Justice increases its attacks against immigrant voters and public worries over mail-in voting grow.

"The question is: Will greater enthusiasm overcome greater barriers this time around?" he said.

Back in Wiener's campaign office, Huang echoed similar concerns. She said that at the end of the day, she is picking up the phone to make a connection with voters. For her, making sure Cantonese-speaking voters have their ballots and are planning to return them is the most important aspect of volunteering: "It doesn't really matter who they support, because we just want everyone to vote."

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This article originally published at Will Asian voters vote based on identity? It's a complicated question. .